Motions — Orlando, Florida—Shooting

I seek leave to move a motion without notice to express sympathy with the victims of the Orlando shooting.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none.

I move, That the House express sympathy with the victims of the Orlando shooting. This is a shocking atrocity, and on behalf of all New Zealanders, I would like to express our country’s sincere condolences to those affected by it. As I said yesterday, no innocent person should have to worry about such violence when going about their daily lives or be persecuted for their beliefs or because of who they are. The evening vigils that took place in Auckland, Wellington, and elsewhere were a tangible demonstration of the depth of people’s very real feelings at the scale of this atrocity.

Over the days and weeks ahead we will learn more about the motivations behind this senseless tragedy, but right now there are many people grieving: the victims’ families and friends, and the gay and lesbian community in Florida and around the world. All too often we see these hateful attacks and mass shootings taking the lives of innocent victims. New Zealand stands with the United States and other countries in the fight against violent extremism.

Yesterday I wrote to President Obama to express condolences on behalf of all New Zealanders. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families and friends, and those who responded to this tragic attack, and we wish those who are injured a speedy recovery.

The Labour Party joins with the Government in expressing its horror at this atrocity and its love and sympathy for the victims and their families. Our thoughts are with the people of Orlando and the United States, as well as their representatives here in New Zealand.

This was an atrocious and hateful act. It was an act of terror. It was also an act of hate. It was a targeted attack at the LGBTI community. It was the deliberate mass murder of LGBTI people because of who they were and whom they loved. These young people were attacked and murdered in a place that was meant to be safe for them. It was meant to be a haven where they could go to dance and have fun and be themselves. This was a place where they would not be subject to homophobia or violence or hatred. And in that place, in that sanctuary, they were murdered in cold blood.

Like millions of people around the word, we have all seen the heartbreaking details of what emerged about this shooting—the stories of first responders arriving at the scene to a chorus of ringing cellphones, as the families of those hurt and killed desperately tried to contact their loved ones; the story of Eddie Justice, who was able to hide in the bathroom of the nightclub long enough to send his mother a text telling her that he loved her, and whose mother then had to read the horrifying words: “He’s coming I’m gonna die”.

This attack has broken hearts around the world, but while we mourn and grieve, we must also rededicate ourselves to the great universal values of humanity that attacks like this seek to deny and destroy: inclusion, openness, respect, love. We must reaffirm our commitment to a society where everyone is free to love whom they choose, to worship how they choose, and to be themselves without fear of violence or repression. We must reaffirm our commitment to ending bigotry and intolerance and hatred wherever we find it, because that is what the path of true freedom demands. While we grieve and we mourn, we remind ourselves that love is love and that love is stronger than hate, and that together we will not let hate win.

I rise to support the Prime Minister’s motion and to thank him for it. The Green Party wishes to express its profound shock and sorrow at what has occurred, and its sympathies to the victims themselves, to their families, to their friends, and to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex communities in Orlando and around the world. An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us. I want to name this as an act of homophobic violence. For those of us who are in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex communities, we know that just below the level of taunts and name-calling and subtle prejudice, there is an undercurrent of violence.

In this particular case, in Orlando, America’s absurd gun laws have been a unique enabler for the mass murder that has occurred. But New Zealand also has a history of homophobic violence. One thinks, for example, of Jeff Whittington, who just over 17 years ago was murdered in this town. It should not be that when I and my partner or any from our communities are out in public, we should have to check who is around before we kiss or hold hands, and yet it is so.

At this time I want to ask everyone in this House and everyone listening to this debate now to pay particular attention to the needs of young and vulnerable members of our communities. For older members of the gay community—for example, like me—we have the privilege of being able to choose whom we associate with. We have the relative privilege of being able to make ourselves as safe as we can be. But a younger person does not have that privilege. They are particularly vulnerable; they need our support and they need our love, right now.

I also want to extend a hand of friendship and of love to Muslim communities around the world. We understand that what this man did is not representative of your communities, and we seek relationships that are based on peace and mutual respect. A belief that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people are not entitled to what we call universal human rights, or, worse, a belief that we deserve death for being who we are, cannot be allowed to stand in the world.

In closing, we in the Green Party and, I hope, this House commit ourselves to act against homophobia and homophobic violence and, indeed, transphobic violence, wherever it occurs in the world, and we seek to be a constant voice in the world for universal respect for basic human rights. Thank you.

New Zealand First tenders our condolences, sympathy, deep concern, and regret to the people of Orlando in the USA at this latest terrorist massacre. We in New Zealand First are opposed to religious extremism in any form, and this atrocity resulted from Islamic extremism by a terrorist whose family had sought shelter in the United States. There are those who will take the politically correct view and blame it all on a lack of gun control. They are wrong. They have been misled. They are seeking to divert blame from where it should lie because this terrorist could have used any weapon of destruction—a bomb, an improvised device, a method of mass poisoning—and blaming a lack of gun control in this way is seen, in our view, as simply a cop-out. In the San Bernardino case last year, two extremists gave their baby to somebody to look after and set out to cause a massacre, and when their home was searched, improvised explosive devices were discovered to be present as well.

We have New Zealand cases, as well, of loose border and security controls. Do people remember the hijacking of a plane out of Blenheim by someone whom a political party said should not be here? Or the fact that we could not find a henchman of Saddam Hussein and when immigration officials did, they found a diplomat who had no connection with him at all, and when it was all over, it was found that he should not have been here in the first place? And there are countless examples now where border control officers are making a judgment and having it overruled by others on the basis that they are safe. In short, we are inviting that problem into our country by the looseness and the cavalier attitude we are taking as a country towards matters of security, and—[Interruption] This is not crap; it is a fact, and those who would defend what has gone on here without knowing whom they have brought here and how they are brought here will one day be weeping crocodile tears, pretending that they sought to take action.

With the greatest of respect, one of the reasons that we in New Zealand First are appealing to the moderate Muslims is this: throughout the Western world there are extremists of every religion—we do not distinguish who they might be. But our appeal to the moderate Muslim people in this country, and in any other country, is that the joint security of the country in which you exist or live is dependent on us all alerting the authorities. That is the least we could expect. And as for signing a declaration of values, with the greatest of respect, if you are going to apply it only to refugees and not to everyone who seeks to come here, then you are engaged in a puppy whistle without any real concern for the consequences.

Lastly, there are members here who will say that they are concerned, and yet when put to the test as to the level of upgrade of our security, raising the bar of our finding out who is here, they have simply been found wanting.

💬 Hon Member: Crap.

If it is crappy when I talk about it, sir, that is your speciality.

E Te Whare e tū nei, kotahi tonu te hāngai o te kōrero o Te Pāti Māori, he tangi, he tangi, he tangi mō te hunga ngaro atu i te tirohanga kanohi, kāre i kō atu, kāre i kō mai.

He rā mō te kōrero mō ngā piki me ngā heke o te kaupapa nei ēngari, i tēnei rā tonu nei, kai te tangi te ao o te 50 kua ngaro atu ki te tirohanga kanohi. Ka pērā tonu te aro mō Te Pāti Māori i tēnei rā me taku kī atu, ngaro te kai, ngaro te tangata ki te pō. Iri te rau kawakawa, iri ki whare aituā. He piki raukura, he kotore huia ka whatia, ka ngaro ki Paerau ka ngāro, whakaōti atu!

Āpiti hōno, tātai hōno, te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, āpiti hōno, tātai hōno, ko te hunga ora e takatū nei i te mata o te whenua, kia kaha ki a tātou! Ehara tēnei i te wā ki te whiuwhiu kōrero, he tangi ki ngā mate, tangi ki ngā mate! He tangi ki a rātou e rongo nei te ngau o mamae nō reira, anei, anei tētahi waiata, he waiata tangi mo te hunga kua ngaro.

[To the House standing here, the Māori Party has only one focus and that is lamenting, mourning, and grieving for those lost from sight; absolutely no more, no less.

It is a day to talk about the ups and downs in relation to this matter but on this particular day, the world of the 50 lost from sight is grieving. The Māori Party’s focus is unchanged and, furthermore, I say if food disappears mankind will be lost to the void. Suspended kawakawa leaves hang upon the death house, feather plumage and huia tail feathers, adornments of those gone to the meeting place of the dead of no return.

The lines are joined, the dead to the dead and the living to the living, standing here ready on the face of the land, we need to be courageous! This is not the time to cast aspersions but rather to grieve the dead, yes, to mourn for the dead! Weep for those who feel the pain, so here is a lament for those who have gone.]

Ko-ia tēnei—te mōnehutanga te whakapū-aki te ara tā-ro-a,

Ki ngā paepae maunga—i koia e te tini—e te ma-no,

kia tau ki te toka-o-maumaha-ra.

E tangi nei e te hau marangai ma-te,

E ngau kino nei—te aroha—e!

[This indeed expresses the expiration of life and the very lengthy pathway

To the mountains on the horizon to be traversed by the countless and the multitude,

in order to reach the rock of remembrance.

It is here that the wind of death rains tears

of keen heartfelt sympathy.]

Koi nei tāku e rongo nei i tēnei ahiahi, e taku rangatira tae atu ki tō kōrero, tēnā koutou huri noa, kia ora tātau!

[This, indeed, is what I am experiencing this afternoon, my esteemed one, and that includes your contribution, so acknowledgments to you collectively throughout, and my appreciation to us all.]

No words, no spin, and no gloss can carry over the events that occurred in Orlando yesterday. The slaughter of nearly 50 innocent people is unacceptable by any moral or ethical standard. Equally unacceptable, I think, is the sort of intolerance and the bigotry—because that is what it is—that gets paraded at a time like this as people start to attempt to explain these unacceptable actions. I believe that bigotry begets bigotry, and that in turn begets the type of extremism that we saw exemplified in Orlando yesterday.

This is not an issue where one makes a moral judgment about anybody. The fact is that these young gay and lesbian people were out socialising, something they should have been able to do in perfect freedom, in perfect security, and in perfect confidence. A madman—because that is the one thing that is certain about the perpetrator—cruelly ended that, and the questions will go on for some time as to why and how. There will be questions about the United States’ attitude to the possession of handguns. There will be questions about the motivation of the individual. None of those actually remove the tragedy of what happened. None of those restore any of those lives, rebuild any of those families or those friendships, or rebuild those shattered communities.

We are a long way away, and I am sure that the people of the United States are not sitting by their televisions now hanging on our every word, but our expression of sympathy and solidarity with them at this time of grief counts in that it shows that as members of the world community we actually share some basic values about integrity, we share some basic values about freedom, and we share some basic values about people being able to live their lives and express their personalities to the fullest extent.

Every time we see an event like this it is a challenge to all of those values that we hold dear, even if we may not be immediately near the scene of the crime. So I share with others the sense of outrage and the expression of condolence and sympathy to the people of the United States, and Orlando in particular, on this horrific occasion. But to start to go beyond that to draw spurious conclusions at this early stage I simply think starts to light the fuse for the next horrible outrage, and that is unacceptable.

I would like to add the ACT Party’s sympathy and condolences to those messages from other leaders who have made dignified and factual contributions to this debate.

It is a great tragedy, and our thoughts are with the victims, with their families, with their communities, and particularly with the LGBTI communities of Orlando, which appear to have been deliberately targeted. Let us remain strong in the knowledge that free and open societies have the resilience to sustain these tragedies, to support each other, and to grow stronger again together. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.